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Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Whole Foods Very Politely Criticizes Michael Pollan

In his new book, Michael Pollan spends a lot of time criticizing Whole Foods for becoming an industrialized “Big Organic.”The CEO and co-founder of the company has written an open letter to Pollan, complaining that the author never tried to talk to the company’s top leadership before bashing the grocery store in The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

“I regret that you did not engage in any serious research about how Whole Foods Market actually does business or you would have discovered that we support local and small farm food production all over the United States as well as in other parts of the world. Whole Foods Market, despite its size, does not operate as a typical monolithic corporation such as Wal-Mart (with which you associate Whole Foods Market several times in your book). Our company continues to operate on a decentralized model wherein each of our 11 regions, as well as each store, has a high level of autonomy. Differences in product offerings, suppliers, and seasonal availability result in a significant variation of items on our shelves from region to region and even store to store within the same city. However, our strict quality standards, the highest in the industry, are observed with every supplier and retail outlet. In other words, you may find a variation in the types and kinds of products, but each has been screened by our rigorous quality standards.”